Dictation of Personhood

By Fr. Frank Pavone

9/19/16

The 14th amendment to the Constitution states in part, "nor
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or
property without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The fact that the law does not protect children in the womb
from abortion is rooted in the words of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade
decision: "the word person as used in the
Fourteenth Amendment does not include the unborn." What is
less widely known is the decision handed down eight months
before Roe vs. Wade, in which personhood was also discussed
in relation to protecting the environment. In the decision of
Sierra Club vs. Morton, Justice Douglas argued in the
following words: "The ordinary corporation is a person for
purposes of the adjudicatory process. ... So it should be as
respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries,
beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland or even air that
feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and
modern life. ... With all respect, the problem is to make
certain that the inanimate objects, which are the very core
of Americas beauty, have spokesmen before they are
destroyed. ... The voice of the inanimate object, therefore,
should not be stilled. ... That is why these environmental
issues should be tendered by the inanimate object itself.
Then there will be assurances that all of the forms of life
which it represents will stand before the court  the
pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the
lemmings as well as the trout in the streams. Those
inarticulate members of the ecological group cannot speak."
Eight months later, he ruled with the majority in Roe vs.
Wade that "the word person ... does not include the unborn."
There is a stunning arbitrariness to this decision and a
stunning implication about the power of the government. To
support Roe vs. Wade is not merely to allow the existence of
the most common surgical procedure in America. It is to
acknowledge that the government has the power to say who is a
person and who is not. And if the government is to have that
say, then who is to limit the groups to whom it is applied?
Supporters of Roe vs. Wade can ask, "Could the government
ever declare my teenage daughter to be a non-person? Could it
ever say I am not a person?" If the answer is no then a
person has not understood the full implication of Roe vs.
Wade. Such supporters say the government should not be
involved in the abortion decision." How true. In fact, the
government got too involved when, in 1973, it presumed to
have the power to deprive some of the right to live. The
government should indeed back away from the abortion decision
by recognizing that it does not have the power to permit the
lives of the innocent to be taken. Those who govern are to
govern all the people. All includes the smallest and weakest,
the persons unborn. Fr. Pavone is the International
Director of Priests for Life and an official at the
Vaticans Council for the Family. Copyright
?1997 Arlington Catholic Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.